Guest Column dedicated to the dissemination of information from other organizations
ATC products funded by the Henry J. Degenkolb Memorial Endowment Fund.
The Council The Applied Technology Council (ATC) was created by practicing professionals with the intent of serving the evolving needs of engineering practice. Begun in 1971 after the San Fernando earthquake demonstrated the need for improved hazard mitigation strategies and seismic design standards, the founders came up with the novel idea to pay engineers and researchers to develop these technologies instead of relying on volunteer labor. ATC became a nonprofit, tax-exempt corporation in 1973. Since its inception, ATC has engaged the services of highly qualified expert consultants in design practice, building regulation, academia and other specialty areas, to “review research, decide what is useful, and convert it to a format readily useable by the practicing engineer,” in the words of its first two Executive Directors, Ronald Mayes and Roland Sharpe. ATC’s mission is to develop and promote state-of-the-art, user-friendly engineering resources and applications used in mitigating the effects of natural and other hazards on the built environment. ATC also identifies and encourages needed research and develops consensus opinions on structural engineering issues in a nonproprietary format. ATC thereby fulfills a unique role in funded information transfer. ATC is guided by a Board of Directors consisting of representatives appointed by the American Society of Civil Engineers’ Structural Engineering Institute (ASCE-SEI), the National Council of Structural Engineers Associations (NCSEA), the Structural Engineers Association of California (SEAOC), the Structural Engineers Association of New York (SEAoNY), the Western States Council of Structural Engineers Associations (WSCSEA), and four at-large representatives concerned with the practice of structural engineering. The Board members are balanced between practicing and academic experts with a wide knowledge of
A Brief History of ATC… By Vicki Arbitrio, P.E., SECB, F.SEI
Vicki Arbitrio, P.E., SECB, F.SEI, is the Vice President of ATC and an Associate Partner at Gilsanz Murray Steficek in New York. She can be reached at vickiarbitrio@gmsllp.com.
The online version of this article (www.STRUCTUREmag.org) includes in-depth listings of ATC Council Directors (past and present) and ATC Projects and Reports.
36 April 2015
different hazards: earthquakes, wind storms, floods, fires and tsunamis. Project management and administration for all ATC projects are carried out by ATC’s technical staff, led by the Executive Director. Because the technical development work is conducted by a wide range of highly qualified consulting professionals, including individuals from academia, research, and professional practice, each project benefits from experience which would not be available from any single organization. Funding for ATC projects is obtained from government agencies such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), state agencies such as the State of California, local municipalities such as the City of San Francisco, and from the private sector in the form of taxdeductible contributions. In 1989, ATC established the Henry J. Degenkolb Memorial Endowment Fund, named in honor of a dedicated international leader in structural and earthquake engineering. The ATC Endowment Fund supports projects of critical importance to structural engineering design practice, but for which funds are not available from traditional funding sources. In 2015, ATC will take over management of the James Merriam Delahay Foundation, named in honor of a leader known nationwide for his work on wind codes and standards. The ATC Board of Directors would like the ATC Endowment Fund to support at least one significant project annually. Most recently, the ATC Endowment Fund has contributed funding to the development of the following (for a complete list, please visit the ATC website): ATC-20-1 Bhutan, Field Manual: Postearthquake Safety Evaluation of Buildings (2014) ATC Windspeed by Location website, http://windspeed.atcouncil.org/ (2011) ATC Design Guide 2, Basic Wind Engineering for Low-Rise Buildings (2009)
